At 12:04 AM 10/30/98 +1300, J. Maxwell Legg wrote:
>Ian, what seems evident here is that argument by selective definition is
>not enough and cannot persuade parties. In this thread, for example,
>others would say that politics is about forging and changing coalitions
>and that this definition seems to negate the ability of any individual
>from having or creating political power without the involvement of
>others, as you implied.
>
>There is this problem with general discourse in a way that likely even a
>Platonist would agree that written language is about not being able to
>come to agreement and in fact is more about missing perspectives. What I
>would hope eventually to see is a collective internet rendering of
>presentations that is something even bolder than what crit.org can do.
>I'd like to eventually see an elevation of subject matter on the basis
>of subjective evaluations of features where, by using say e.g., floating
>radio buttons in a sidebar to the subject area, to enable a scoring of
>features so that neural net patterns and/or markov-like chains could be
>developed and forever remain open to revision. Such an eventual global
>valuation of everything via the net is what I foresee. Because my
>software development is in this field, this is my expectation of
>libertarian socialism.
IAN: I certainly believe that libertarianism is the real "socialism" where we define socialism as a system that most effectively meets social needs, and a system directed by the people (a supply and demand system), whereas what we call socialism is directed by elite planners (control and command).
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with the idea from the beginning."
Max Plank - Nobel physicist